Four Hundred Monitor, May 10

Why would anyone want to move on-premise IBM i infrastructure to the cloud? Utility pricing, moving a development environment off the production server, and establishing a disaster recovery plan are a few things that come to mind.

This edition of Monitor also includes articles on the top CIO challenges (business and IT alignment is a big one) and the nightmares brought on by H1-B visa program. You’ll also find useful resources and a calendar of events that includes tech conferences and local user group meeting agendas. If you are not a member of a local user group, you’re missing out on a valuable professional tool.

Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

(IBM Systems Magazine) Power Systems are built to host data-intensive workloads, with private or hybrid cloud environments as an option to on-premise infrastructure. Predictable monthly charges based on utilization, hosting development and testing, building a new mobile app, and securing a disaster recovery failover environment are a few reasons for exploring cloud options.

(ZDNet) CIOs will face several key challenges as they overhaul their IT departments in readiness for the next stage of enterprise computing. The biggest challenge is working out what their business colleagues need and supporting them to make the right technology decisions.

(CIO) Craig Diangelo was an IT worker at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut until he completed training his H-1B-visa-holding replacement. He was one of about 200 who lost their jobs in 2014 after two India-based IT offshore outsourcing firms took over their work.

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources

(IBM) This white paper explains how to access web services using IBM DB2 for i SQL queries and user-defined functions. The paper demonstrates how to combine these functions with the built-in SQL/XML support to create the HTTP request and process the HTTP response.

(IBM) The IBM Watson developer community lives here. Getting started tutorials, finding tools, resources, documentation, and a question and answer forum—it’s all here.

(COMMON) During this 40-minute recording, Scott Forstie explains the new and enhanced DB2 for i features just delivered March 31 for users of IBM i 7.2 and IBM i 7.3.

(System i Developer) Programmers are always on the lookout for great productivity tips. As more IBM i developers shift to RDi as their primary development environment, they will need to get up to speed with Remote System Explorer, which forms the base of RDi. These “Favorite RSE Keyboard Shortcuts” by Susan Gantner will surprise you with the difference they make.

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

May 7-10 — Orlando, Florida – The 2017 COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition is the largest IBM i educational event of the year. It includes more than 300 sessions related to IBM i, as well as AIX and Linux. Open source, high availability, security, DB2, and application development are a few of the popular skill-building topics. The agenda includes all-day pre-conference workshops, open labs, and a wide variety of lecture-type sessions presented by subject matter experts. An early registration discount ($1,595 for members; $1,895 for non-members) is available through December 30.

May 16 — Lombard, Illinois – IBM i author and educator Jim Buck will be the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Omni User Group. His session will include a step-by-step guided tour from replacing called programs with sub-procedure modules and then converting the modules to procedures in a called service program. The meeting begins at 5 p.m. at Casey’s Restaurant located at 415 East NorthAvenue

May 16 — Auburn Hills, Michigan – IBM i Web-based business intelligence will be presented at the meeting of the Southeast Michigan IBM i User Group. Guest speaker Jim Bainbridge from IBM Lab Services will discuss the DB2 Web Query tool. The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be held at the offices of Cooper Standard located at 2110 Executive Hills Court. Remote access to the presentation will also be available.

May 16 — Costa Mesa, California – IBM i memory tuning for performance will be the featured topic at the regular monthly meeting of the OCEAN User Group. Guest speaker is Dave Lewis, a member of the IBM i Performance Lab Services team. Networking begins at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner and Lewis’ presentation. The meeting will be held at National University located at 3390 Harbor Boulevard.

May 17 — North Attleboro, Massachusetts – IBM i DB2 architect Rob Bestgen will be the guest speaker at the New England Midrange User Group meeting. His session topic will cover SQL tips and techniques. The meeting begins at 5:15 at Jimmy G’s Tavern located at 116 Elm Street.

May 17 — Westbury, New York – The Long Island Systems Users Group May Education Day will include three educational sessions presented by IBM i experts Ted Holt, Alex Roytman and Liam Allan, along with a panel discussion on modernization featuring panel members Pete Massiello, Steve Wolk and Randy Farnbach. The event will be held at the Westbury Manor located at 1100 Jericho Turnpike.

May 18 — Parsippany, New Jersey – The North Eastern Systems Technology Users (NESTU) group is hosting a one-day educational opportunity featuring three sessions: Open Source ILE Concepts, Web Services via RPG, and a topic yet to be determined. Guest speaker is IBM Power Systems/Cognitive Systems Champion Liam Allan. There will be two afternoon sessions and one in the evening. The meeting will be held at the Tandoori Flames restaurant located at 1557 Route 46 East.

May 22 — Bloomington, Minnesota – A one-day workshop featuring Rational Developer for IBM i is being hosted by QUSER, the local user group for IBM midrange professionals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Guest speaker is RDi subject matter expert Charles Guarino. Topics include RSE navigation, views, preferences and the LPEX source code editor. The workshop location is the offices of Universal Hospital Services located at 6625 West 78th Street.

May 22-26 — Orlando, Florida – IBM Systems Technical University is a training and skills event featuring Power Systems, z Systems, and storage. Sessions are tailored for executives, business managers, data center managers, tech support managers, project managers, systems and application programmers, IT architects, and systems and database admins. Thirty-nine IBM i-specific session are on the agenda.

May 24 — Mississauga, Ontario, Canada – The Toronto User Group meeting will feature two sessions by IBM Power Systems Champion Jim Buck. At 5 p.m., Buck discusses the costs involved with failing to modernize and at 7 p.m. he explains the use of SQL and cursors. In between is time for dinner and networking.

June 13 & 14 — London, England – The International iPower Conference is a two-day event that features educational labs and hands-on workshops on day one and lecture-type sessions on day two. Session topics include security, SQL development, Watson analytics, cloud strategies, business intelligence, and in-depth examinations of IBM i and DB2.